


The Road Not Taken: Another Morning Like The Last

by fadeverb



Series: In Nomine: the Company [10]
Category: In Nomine
Genre: Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 19:42:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,293
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5598436
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fadeverb/pseuds/fadeverb
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A winter morning with Valentin, ten years on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Road Not Taken: Another Morning Like The Last

You prop yourself up on an elbow, and lodge the obligatory protest: "I'm not crazy anymore, not more than half the time. Three fifths, at most." The sunlight spreads across your ankles and calves, the tangle of sheet resting between your knees, the edge of the bed and then a perfect rectangle of shining wooden floor between. Between bed and floor, the gap in the sunlight implies someone has sliced it into pieces to distribute: this much for you, this much for an old house in need of warming. The hairs along your arms are already prickling up, now that you're holding still, and in a few minutes you will have either go find clothing, or burrow under the bedding all over again.

"I'd rate you at four sevenths." It's an old joke, and not much of a joke, but the point isn't to be /funny/, really, it's to have the back and forth turn into its own pattern. Stability through repetition and cycles. They talk about these things behind your back, and you pretend not to notice, because at least four sevenths of sanity is agreed upon mass hallucination. You all pretend you're fine, and that makes you fine.

Except for Leo. Maybe he's fine in truth. He dresses quickly, exactly like someone might if they were looking particularly towards being out of the room with you, or like someone who considers clothing a sort of maintenance skill. Execute it quickly and be done with it. You suspect that he changes the oil in his stable of exceedingly fast cars with the same motions, fingers moving as quickly across engine parts (which you can't name, you have never been particularly clear on the mechanics of those machines) as they do over buttons and hems here. He has not forgotten you're in the room, though a body could be forgiven for believing so: eyes distant, mind distant, internal gears grinding against each other (or doing whatever car engines do, they're not actually like clockwork, but they make good metaphors for this breaker of what he doesn't care for and what stands in his way) as he plots. Schemes! He schemes like a Balseraph. You find it charming.

"You can't be talking to Lanthano," you point out. "Your earpiece isn't in yet." You turn one knee a little to the side, so that the sunlight can roll across the inside of your calf. "What's the grand occasion on your mind? You have to be planning something celebratory, now that you have titles. It's already in your email signature."

"Blame IT for that one." Leo steps in front of the mirror to consider his hair. Such an excellent mirror, and aimed nowhere near the bed; you can't even see it from where you're lying, not a hint of reflection. No one will admire you but yourself, and there is such a thing, Valentin, as being slightly too much of an Impudite cliche. Other things that the unwary could take Leo for, in his current vessel: Impudite. Or Lilim. Pretty little face, pretty hair, all of it really too soft and sweet if it weren't for the Destroyer inhabiting it. A piece of fluff you'd pick out from between your teeth, in Hell.

"IT is full of mysteries, and some day you should figure out how to edit your own email signatures." You have given up on waiting for admiration. The sunlight is all that seems inclined to give you that right now. With a small noise, just enough to let him know what you're up to, you roll out from under all the bedding and set your feet on the cold floor. "If not a party, what?"

"The company party will handle any obligatory celebration." Leo turns on a smile for you, one of your favorites, insincere and bright. "And you'll have something nefarious planned for that whatever I do meanwhile, so don't pretend I can get out of that doom by throwing myself a party."

"So you /are/ scheming."

"No, that's your job."

"Scheming," you repeat. You've taken to speaking English with this boy, at least on the corporeal plane, and he is no doubt aware of exactly how manipulative that is. It's not a bad language, though not your favorite by far. All those voiced stops that it insists on considering unvoiced ones, in writing and deliberately spaced pronunciation! A language weighted by its own writing system and barnacled with dozens of freeloading words from other languages. Just feel those consonants across your tongue. It's a good word. "Will you be getting yourself into trouble again?"

"I've sworn off trouble," Leo says lightly. Out of bed and back in clothes, he's already pulling his Role back on. Leo is not Rachel is not Ian, in almost the same way you are not the you of a decade ago, or a decade before that, or a century before that. Almost. "I'm a responsible member of our community."

"All the paperwork says so." You cross the too-cold floor, and drape your chin over the top of his head. Such a small vessel, to be able to do that in your own! The two of you are a pretty picture in the mirror. The libertine and the debaucher, the professional and the prostitute. It's all of one piece. "I should've brought a camera."

"Phone?"

"With that lens?" You slide a hand under the waistband of her neat set of trousers. "How much trouble will this particular scheme get you in, and will there be emergency calls for help at the end of it?"

"Careful," Leo says. "You might almost sound responsible yourself."

"Never." You bite the corner of her neck hard enough to leave a mark. "I'm the shifty one, who offloaded an upcoming promotion onto some hapless fool who still thinks distinctions are an honor, and not luggage to drag through every subsequent job."

He makes a hand gesture at you in the mirror, and detaches himself from your embrace. Twitchy little fellow, even years on.

"You didn't learn that one from becoming a Knight." In fact, you've seen that exact gesture performed by imps in Stygian gutters. "If you're spending this much time not telling me what you're up to, it must involve Heaven."

"Responsible member of the community," Leo repeats. "And responsibility means staying well away from enemy agents unless the job has me doing otherwise." He tugs a hem into place. So precise! He ought to have a Daosheng here to handle his collars for him, but you're not about to start doing it yourself. That's half a step away from falling into the wrong fifths of your madness. Your very well-contained madness, thank you very much.

"Liar," you say. You're telling the truth, aren't you? And he always makes the most interesting face when you say that, now that you've found the right tone to deliver it in. You are well able to make educated guesses, no matter what Adrian says about evidence and conclusions and leaping from one to the other.

Leo picks up his bag from the stand by the door. "Charming monster."

"And slightly over half mad. Have I ever pretended otherwise?"

He doesn't answer that. He's already gone, leaving you naked, alone, cold. He wouldn't be a Destroyer if he left a room without breaking something, would be?

It's not a bad room. His. You'll make sure he thinks of you the next time he steps inside, though perhaps not /immediately/. Something subtle, which he'll notice at the right moment.

For the moment, though, you return to the bed. Sunlight, bedding, everything you could want to wrap around yourself. (Almost everything.) You and your madness can warm yourself in that, or memory. Whatever ends up working first.


End file.
